


Unlovable

by UnderTheRedHood



Series: Here Lies Jason Peter Todd [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Angst, Batfamily Feels, honestly I'm dead inside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-25
Updated: 2015-06-25
Packaged: 2018-04-06 04:26:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4207887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnderTheRedHood/pseuds/UnderTheRedHood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason remembers something from what seems like a life-time ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unlovable

**Author's Note:**

> One-Shot.

“When you’re little, you’re unconditionally loved.”

Jason can still remember the first time he heard Dick Grayson utter those words.  They were sitting in the study, under the hazy moonlight that lit the Gotham sky, waiting for Bruce and the undeniably awful punishment he would dish out to them.  

The two of them were infamous for pranking the Dark Knight and his alter ego.  Jason remembers once, they wired the batmobile to blast Hannah Montana whenever Batman revved the engines.   Commissioner Gordon claimed that for weeks, the criminals around Gotham were humming “The Best of Both Worlds” whenever the Bat would stalk past.

Another time, they snuck out at night and wheat-pasted a sign to the front windows of Bruce’s office in Wayne Enterprises.  It read, “I CRY DURING SEX” and was there for all of Gotham to see.  That one was Jason’s idea.  Jason smiles when he thinks about this, about how Alfred scolded them, pacing back and forth with a finger wagging in front of him.  Dick later claimed that he saw Bruce laughing during the encounter.

But... Jason now thinks about that time, in Bruce’s study, when their normally upbeat feats went completely haywire.  It had been intended to be a prank, Dick tried to explain, they didn’t really mean to blow up the wall to Gotham’s largest bank.  Explaining their true purposes proved to be hard enough, so inevitably, the two waited anxiously for their surrogate-father in the concealing walls of Wayne Manor.

Dick was 18-- too old to be scolded and punished, or so he claimed to Jason.  Jason doubted that he would be brave enough to bring this up with Bruce, however, because even the boldest criminal could be condemned to a sniveling mess by that man.

They were reminiscing, or Dick was, about being small, about the circus and even about when he first came to the Manor.  Jason was still a kid-- just eleven years old, so the idea that Dick wanted to go back to being young and powerless seemed absolutely ridiculous.  Jason sneered at the thought, which made Dick get defensive, and that’s when he said those six words.

“When you’re little, you’re unconditionally loved.”

Jason frowns now, mirroring the frown he gave then as he muttered, “I wasn’t.”

Dick was caught off guard by his kid-brother and the vulnerability that the phrase portrayed.  He didn’t understand what that meant, what it was like to not have a person in the world who loves you, and Jason would bet now that he still doesn’t.  No, not Dick Grayson: the boy wonder, the golden-boy, the goofy acrobat who could save the world and all the hot red-heads that came with it.  Dick was the man that could fly.

Jason wanted to know what that was like.  His own mother loved drugs more than she did him.  Bruce would always favor Dick, and besides, his devotion to justice and a made-up moral code outweighed his commitment to the second Boy Wonder.  Boy Wonder?  No, there was nothing wonderful about the mangy, pathetic kid that Jason saw himself as.

Maybe that’s why Jason Todd will never forgive Bruce Wayne, why he’ll never return to the Manor, why he’ll never again look up at the flying wonder that is Dick Grayson.

Jason knows what it’s like to be unlovable.

 


End file.
